Heath Thorpe Non-Selection

[Passion]

From her other tweets I think this is James Hardy’s mom.
“The document there is Categorisation. It was published at the end of last year, after 2022 World Championships. It has nothing to do with Nationals results.”

How is Vedant Sawant “Podium Potential” on PH but Thorpe “developing” on FX? (and maybe even HB)

If this list was made in 2022… then going by 2022 results they sent Vedant Sawant to several World Challenge Cups and he made the final in 3 of them. They sent Thorpe to Worlds but he didn’t make any finals. Thorpe also went to two of the same Challenge Cups Sawant went to, competed 6 events total (3 at each Cup) but only made one final.

It says in their performance targets for Challenge Cups that they wanted two top 8 finishes at each event, and Sawant helped achieve that with 3 top 8 finishes himself. That’s probably what got him categorized as podium potential.

 

[CameliasFingerpaint]

… made the final in a challenge cup? The same challenge cups that Chuso made the bars finals in? What fucking world are they living in?

I really hope Australia qualifies no one to the Olympics at worlds.

 

[Passion]

… made the final in a challenge cup? The same challenge cups that Chuso made the bars finals in? What fucking world are they living in?

The same Challenge Cups that Thorpe struggled to make finals in.

2022 Paris World Challenge Cup - Vedant Sawant made the PH final and finished 5th.
Heath Thorpe finished 14th on FX, 17th on VT, and 22nd on HB.

2022 Szombathely World Challenge Cup - Vedant Sawant made the PH final and finished 6th.
Heath Thorpe finished 11th on FX, 16th on SR, made the final on HB and finished 5th.

2022 Mersin World Challenge Cup - Verdant Sawant made the PH final and finished 7th.

2022 World Championships - Heath Thorpe finished 50th AA, 87th FX, 125th PH, 79th SR, 109th PB, and 41st HB.

Verdant Sawant was categorized as “podium potential” and Heath Thorpe was categorized as “developing” at the end of 2022.

If you’re going to diminish Sawant’s Challenge Cup placements because Chuso was able to make a bars final, then why wasn’t Thorpe able to easily make his finals? Why isn’t he running away with the titles? Because MAG is not WAG. MAG is more competitive than WAG and the Australian men are not a top team. Making the final in a World Challenge Cup is a goal.

 

[Denn]

To be fair, Verdant Sawant is only 19. His growth trajectory is better.

But Thorpe also did improve on floor…

 

[irichluck21]

GA responded to their World selection decisions.

 

[irichluck21]

 

[onodian]

GA responded to their World selection decisions.

https://twitter.com/GymCastic/status/1682432716766330880

This reads like a chatGPT answer

 

[rlayt]

 

[Hatsumomo]

Someone on the Gymnastics subreddit actually put in a prompt in Chat GPT and the resulting response was a lot more coherent than this.

Here it is:

 

[Indy]

The ChatGPT answer is much better. Gymnastics Australia should try using it the next time they need to make a public statement.

 

[CameliasFingerpaint]

Why are we using competitions almost a year ago to make team decisions? By that metric Kyla Ross would have been on the 2015 worlds team.

 

[Passion]

Why are we using competitions almost a year ago to make team decisions? By that metric Kyla Ross would have been on the 2015 worlds team.

Nothing in my post was talking about team decisions at all. It was explaining the chart that listed Sawant as podium potential and Thorpe as developing. The chart was made a year ago, so that’s why it was using competitions that happened a year ago. Someone on twitter just pulled that list off the internet without knowing what it was.

 

[Denn]

I missed that goal of your post myself. Thank you for the correction.

 

[GymBeauty]

Vedent Sawant currently has the best chance of winning a medal out of all the Australian guys, going by his Pommel score at Nationals and the cutoff for what got a medal last year.

Clay Stephens is the one who should not have been on this team, the only possible justification is his higher average score on Floor at Nationals, but what he did there is not World Championship level. Heath Thorpe has the higher international score on Floor and the higher difficulty score, in addition to being better in the AA, and he’s shown more upward trajectory.

 

[BB12]

Neither of them are ‘world championship level’

 

[Passion]

Clay Stephens is the one who should not have been on this team, the only possible justification is his higher average score on Floor at Nationals, but what he did there is not World Championship level. Heath Thorpe has the higher international score on Floor and the higher difficulty score, in addition to being better in the AA, and he’s shown more upward trajectory.

Clay Mason Stephens was 2nd AA at Oceania Championships though, ahead of James Hardy.

I’d say the three of them (Thorpe, Mason-Stephens, Hardy) are generally within tenths of each other all around. You could flip a coin and decide which two to take (if you wanted to only take two AAers) and end up with pretty much the same results at Worlds.

What they really should have done was have an actual World Trials closer to September if Nationals had to be in May. Not try to pick a team to compete in October from results that all came from the first week of May and earlier. They at least could have had the virtual trials later, and maybe make sure everybody actually sends in all the events they planned to compete at Worlds. I’m still baffled that Thorpe only sent in a PH routine.

 

[Passion]

I made a chart documenting everyone in question’s start values and scores from Oceania Championships, Nationals Round 1 (AA), and Nationals Round 2 (EF). Tyson Bull was also named to the team but wasn’t in these meets, he’s recovering from an injury.

Oceania Championships - May 6, 2023
Australia Nationals - May 11, 2023
National EF - May 13, 2023

*For James Hardy’s Nat EF score, I used just his first vault 14.4 to calculate his AA score.

These are not the only competitions they used to select the team, these were just the most recent. The selection procedures say they look at everything throughout the year. So World Cups, DTB Pokal, Virtual routines, etc.

 

[JDB]

According to Gymcastic, an unspecified gymnast won an appeal for the selection decision resulting in the team selection being redone. Gymnastics Australia chose the same team.

Jump to 19:45. One Year to Paris - GymCastic

 

[falcon9]

This whole thing is just absurd… how can they not take the AA champ?

 

[makam]

What’s the point of naming a national champion if that means nothing for selection to the big events? I’m trying to imagine a scenario where the uninjured national champion from any other country isn’t on their Worlds/Olympics team and cannot think of one other than maybe Japan would leave them at home if they didn’t make the other two required meets or whatever.